My verdict:Sorry, that’s life. The public can’t afford to pay for everything.

THE DILEMMA posed by high-cost pharmaceuticals isn’t one likely to go away any time soon.

With hepatitis C treatments clocking up their first $1 billion in just four months, PBS budgeters must be sweating.

However, they would also be relieved that they didn’t cave in to the campaign – backed by the manufacturer but involving patient advocacy groups and some doctors – to approve the drugs earlier at an even higher cost, as happened in the US.

Coming second on the PBS expense list, at half a billion, are two macular degeneration drugs with their own cost controversies.

The manufacturer of ranibizumab (Lucentis) has been heavily criticised for purchasing the patent on its only competitor but not doing the head-to-head study that might have allowed approval for the cheaper drug. Back then, Lucentis cost 50 times the price of its competitor, and it remains the gift that keeps on giving, near the very top of this year’s PBS spending. Merry Christmas, shareholders.

At the top end of the market, where high-rollers spend public funds on the promise of clinical benefit, it is no surprise that a new player has entered the room. A Netherlands-based company has just created a new niche for those customers who can afford it. Continue reading →

To coincide with today’s Senate inquiry on how to catch Lyme Disease in Australia (short version – you can’t), Justin and Liz interview infectious disease expert Prof Frank Bowden, from Australian National University.

Frank swats aside a series of claims by Australian lyme disease proponents, but sounds stumped when Justin asks whether sentinel chickens or sentinel ticks are better at keeping watch.

The conversation takes a few twists, lurching from false positive US lab results to unrelated matters such as whether having sex before the game enhances or detracts from sports performance. You’ll have to listen to find out the answer.*

Bottle claiming to contain one trillion trillion trillion trillion trillionth of this flower.

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has just issued an enforcement policy statement requiring marketers of homeopathic products to ‘effectively communicate the lack of scientific evidence’ on product labels.

The move is being heralded as the first time that homeopathic products will legally require a label stating that they don’t work.

Numerous submissions to the FTC report cited the Australian 2015 comprehensive assessment of evidence by the NHMRC, which concluded there is no reliable evidence that homeopathy is effective for any health conditions.

Although the evidence overwhelmingly supports the new FTC policy, much of their report deals with legal issues, possibly pre-empting industry arguments that regulating advertising claims might be inconsistent with the US First Amendment around free speech.

The FTC policy does not constitute a new law, but it clarifies the minimum standards for homeopathic health claims, which until now have largely been left to self-regulation. Homeopathic products will now “be held to the same truth-in-advertising standards as other products claiming health benefits.”

The world is a less certain place than it was this time yesterday, and the health industry has not escaped waking up with that feeling of ‘what just happened?’

US President elect Donald Trump vowed through his campaign to ‘immediately repeal’ Obamacare, but it seems no one has any idea what Trumpcare will look like. The Affordable Care Act will be afforded no longer, and health analysts are scrambling to find much more than election sound bites to predict what might replace it.

To consult the modern oracles, one need never travel further than the stockmarket. As investors fled US-dollar exposed shares yesterday, health insurance stocks were caught in the maelstrom.

Repealing Obamacare entirely would leave 20 million without health insurance, and although few believe the Republicans will go so far, Trump is predictably unpredictable. That’s enough to spook health insurers and owners of private hospitals. Continue reading →

Important new findings today suggest that planning to have your child born before 39 weeks’ gestation may be associated with worse brain developmental outcomes, once your child reaches school age.

SOMETIMES there is no choice in having to pre-book an early birth. If your pregnancy is high-risk or complicated by a particular medical condition, then planning an early delivery, by C-section or going to the hospital for induction, may be the safest option.

However, increasingly the delivery of babies is pre-planned without necessarily a pressing medical need. In fact, in Australia, planned births now account for around half of all deliveries at 37 and 38 weeks’ gestation. Today’s news it that your child may be more likely to have unforeseen complications down the track.

What is this new study?

A study published today in Paediatrics linked the birth records of 153,730 children born in NSW in 2002-7 with the child’s performance some years later, as graded by their teacher in the triennial Australian Early Development Census (AEDC).